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Trustworthy brands: how & why, continued ...Published: April 01, 2010

“More than ever, trust is the secret ingredient to building a sustainable relationship between partners, vendors and, ultimately, customers,” says OC METRO Publisher and Churm Media CEO Steve Churm. “We wanted to find the Orange County companies that understand the importance of trust, and learn how and why it has fueled their cultures and successes. What we discovered about how trust forms between brands and customers in the county is truly remarkable.”

No surprise that Disneyland is in the top 10. But what the researchers found intriguing was the variety of brand names. The other six: Mother’s Market, Trader Joe’s, Vizio, Planned Parenthood, St. Joseph Hospital and Cal State Fullerton.

“We have always believed that the best brands are those that develop sustainable relationships with their customers based on much more than their product or service,” says DGWB President Mike Weisman. “Especially in this age of universal mistrust, customers care the most for brands that show they care for them.”

Chesley Beaver, the architect of the Most Trustworthy Brands survey, says the goal was not to see what brands were the most popular, but which brands ranked highest in terms of sincerity, consistency, ability, concern, and connection.

“What we found was that consistency was much more important in Orange County than it was in similar surveys for the rest of the country,” says Beaver, a Stanford University-educated researcher with expertise in marketing strategies and business development.